If you are new to Adsense and start with a low traffic site, you will see a massive drop in earnings when your traffic picks up. When you are an established site, you will see ups and downs depending on the niche you are in. In my case: my ePCM over the last 12 months has been going up and down like a jojo between $0.8 and $3.5. With over 10.000 visitors a day that gives a massive difference in earnings on a daily basis. My advice, focus on getting more visitors, so that any decrease in CPC is covered by more visitors and any increase just gives a nice extra smile ;-)
Good advertisers are getting better at getting high CTR's and therefore paying less. With a high CTR many advertisers get clicks for 2-3-4 cent each. The advertisers willing to pay 20 cent per click are pushed off the page.
You could try removing your adds, and adding them back in again. A few people have done that in DP and reported that it help them avoid smart pricing
My AdSense income has been up all month. I swapped out one of my themes for one that is AdSense-friendly and the click through rate nearly doubled. I have noticed that the payout isn't as good per click, but the increased click throughs mean that I am making more money. I wonder if these changes has to do with Google dumping Arbitrage sites?
Maybe.. might also have to do with eBay stopping their AdWords campaigns too.. My Adsense earnings are at an all-time low this month.. it hurts, but it's not killing me 'cause i'm diversified ..
publishers don't have cpc, they have epc: "earnings per click" ecpm is a worthless metric, because it can't tell you where the problem area is. there are only 3 choices with adsense: 1) epc 2) ctr 3) traffic if you set up your adsense channels correctly, you'll know what to work on.
I'm actually GLAD to see threads like this, as my earnings have dipped quite a bit over the last month or so... I think it is all due to the summer... nice weather means people are out and about enjoying the weather and not on their computers. I love the summer...but really look forward to fall and winter when everyone is inside!
My earnings are up 200% since 1st June, either Smart Pricing has loosened or they've gotten rid of most of the MFA advertisers in my niches
Why not ad your adsense code into an Adbrite campaign. That way, you can get paid per impression and/or per click! Check sig!
My site gets returning visitors daily. The more readers I get, the lower my CTR rate has been. I think it's because they're getting used to where the ads are. Can't wait until I get search engine visitors.
get rid of the crap traffic... and you will be unsmart priced .. that means no traffic from NON english speaking countries.... you want good payouts... you need to give good traffic
Only true if you are targetting things for the english market. Non english does not equal crap or not good traffic
i've had viral content that got some very good traffic from europe. i've also used country geo-targeting for ypn, serving up adsense instead for all non-u.s. countries... it paid just fine. but i generally don't get huge traffic from the major scammer countries to begin with... so ymmv.